Posted on 03/08/2022 5:31:41 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
Exposure to leaded gasoline lowered the IQ of about half the population of the United States, a new study estimates.
The peer-reviewed study, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focuses on people born before 1996 — the year the U.S. banned gas containing lead.
Overall, the researchers from Florida State University and Duke University found, childhood lead exposure cost America an estimated 824 million points, or 2.6 points per person on average.
Certain cohorts were more affected than others. For people born in the 1960s and the 1970s, when leaded gas consumption was skyrocketing, the IQ loss was estimated to be up to 6 points and for some, more than 7 points. Exposure to it came primarily from inhaling auto exhaust.
The team behind the study used gas consumption data, population estimates and other data to calculate that as of 2015, more than 170 million Americans had had blood lead levels above 5 micrograms per deciliter in their early childhood years.
Lead is a neurotoxin, and no amount of it is safe. Currently, 3.5 micrograms per deciliter is the reference value for blood lead levels to be considered high; the acceptable amount was once higher.
Principal study author Michael McFarland, an associate professor of sociology at Florida State University and a faculty member of the university’s Center for Demography and Population Health, called the number of people affected by lead exposure “staggering.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
Huh. I guess pumping Ethyl was bad for my eye queue.
Remember, we have been told, often, IQ scores are unreliable and depend on culture. /s
At most, they found a small correlation, which could have many other causes.
Junk science lowers the IQ of everyone
Here I blame my mother for painting my chew toys with old lead based house paint.
—
Over-rated BS - I used to chew yummy empty toothpaste tubes (made of lead) and tasty lead paint chips before I moved on to sticking my fingers in electrical sockets and eating school library paste while secretly hidden in kindergarten closets
Have to laugh. Just half? What kept the other half safe? Not smoking pot? Not doing drugs?
Years from now they'll say vaxxines blunted the IQ of about half the population.
I think there is a lot of validity to what you say, and it is something I have had a lot of conversations with people on.
We offload things now, and we expect to access it when we need it by going onto the Internet and getting it on the fly, then we purge it again from our memory when the task is done. That is not a bad thing in some respects, but I have always suspected that comes with a price in some way.
I mean, as a guy who has crossed the age threshold when I can refer to myself with a straight face as a “Senior Citizen”, I find myself, when mentally stuck, helped by being able to look up that stupid, elusive thing on the Internet.
Before the Internet, I guess people like me would just suffer with it until that misplaced data miraculously enters our heads hours or days later.
Or in the middle of the night.
And you people out there know who you are...:)
Wait'll the CDC learns I also siphoned it. They'll go nuts.
Clearly, education has been inadequate for a LONG time, as shown here. IQ has nothing to do with a persons educational experience.
Leaded gasoline?
I thought it was the TV lowering IQs. 🤔
” Lead from gasoline blunted the IQ of about half the U.S. population, study says”
The result of most studies ... more study needed.
The Great Thanksgiving Cranberry Scare Of 1959
"Just days before Thanksgiving that year, Arthur Fleming, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, set off the first nationwide food panic by announcing that domestic cranberry products were contaminated with a carcinogenic herbicide called aminotriazole."
"He failed to point out that one would have to eat 15,000 pounds of cranberries every day for several years to get cancer. The White House didn’t help. Mamie Eisenhower served applesauce with dinner that Thanksgiving. When the newspapers got hold of that, cranberries were toast...."
read more at link..
Then came the Strontium 90 in milk scare...followed by Rachel Carson's tear jerker about evil DDT...and so on, and so on....and here we are.
Exactly.
I do believe (in the case of History, Civics, and reading/writing) that the woke curriculum interferes with those.
But with things like math, one bloody second spent teaching kids about “two mommies” is a second taken away from something that counts.
I view the degradation of the military exactly the same way.
It is a zero-sum game. If you are spending an hour teaching a sailor about the correct gender pronouns, that is an hour less you can spend teaching them about ship-handling and damage control.
It counts in all areas in that respect, K-12, college, military, and professional education.
so thats my problem
“Teacher Union”...
That was the one that entered my mind about half a second after I clicked the “Post” button.
“Exposure to leaded gasoline lowered the IQ of about half the population of the United States, a new study estimates.”
Aha, that explains the democrat half of the country.
No, it was Brain Wave, by Poul Anderson.
Like I tell my grandkids.
We were so dumb we went to the moon and back using equipment that was designed with slide rules, drawn on vellum with pencil, and fabricated by high school grads running manually controlled machines.
I actually don’t think so - the dumbing down admittedly began in the late 60s - remember the ORIGINAL new math. However - the school systems really didn’t start getting bad from my perspective until around 1980ish.
Further - by that point - lead was out of the gas supply for the majority of cars! What percentage of cars were using leaded gas in 1985?
Good God.
And don’t forget the infamous “Alar Scare” back in the early Nineties...
As for that Leftist fraud Rachel Carson, I know I am not the only one who detests her and her techniques...I know I am not the only one who feels that way.
I drive by the Rachel Carson National Wildlife area in Maine on occasion, and recently I was with my buddy who, as we drove by said:
“Hand Salute!” (bilaterally raised middle finger)
“Two!”
BS
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